Articles in English

Against the Current

Charlie Post: A critical look at Empire (nr.99, juli-aug. 2002)
“Empire is a paradox. An overly long (478 pages with notes and index), often abstruse intellectual exercise, this book would appear to be a work destined to obscurity – to be read, at best, by small groups of left-wing intellectuals ensconced in academia. Yet Empire has attracted enormous attention …”

Capital & Class

Paul Thompson: Foundation and Empire: a critique of Hardt and Negri (nr.86, summer 2005, S.99-134)
“In this article, Thompson complements recent critiques of Hardt
and Negri’s Empire using the tools of labour process theory to critique the political economy of Empire, and to note its unfortunate similarities to conventional theories of the knowledge economy.”
The article is online at Find articles.

Finn Bowring: From the mass worker to the multitude: a theoritical contextualisation of Hardt and Negri’s Empire (nr.83, summer 2004, s.101-132)
“Heralded, with no apparent irony, as The Communist Manifesto for our time, the dense but elliptical Empire has achieved almost iconic status among Left academics and activists since it was published in 2000. This essay shifts the focus from the text itself to the Italian Marxist tradition of autonomia from which Negri’s thinking has evolved.”
The article is online at Find articles.

Michael Hardt/Antonio Negri: What the protesters in Genoa want (20. juli, 2001).
“We see seeds of that future already in the sea of faces that stretches from the streets of Seattle to those of Genoa. One of the most remarkable characteristics of these movements is their diversity: trade unionists together with ecologists together with priests and communists. We are beginning to see emerge a multitude that is not defined by any single identity, but can discover commonality in its multiplicity”.

Cultural Logic

Ronaldo Munck: Review (vol.2-3, nr.2, spring 2000)
“Certain books are opportune because of their theme, their timing or their potential political impact. Empire is just such a text. It is a pleasure to see Antonio Negri back in full flow (albeit from a Roman prison) and in partnership with Michael Hardt, a literati from Duke University. Between them they have crafted a profound and most readable text which will surely be influential”.

Empire and Imperialism: A critical reading of Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri
By Atilio A. Boron (Zed Books, 2005, 141 p.)
“The author argues that Hardt and Negri”˜s concept of ”˜imperialism without an address”˜, though well intentioned, ignores most of the fundamental parameters of imperialism. The nation state, far from weakening, remains a crucial agent of capitalism, deploying a large arsenal of economic weaponry to protect and extend its position and actively promoting globalization in its own interests.”

Estrategia Internacional/International Strategy

Juan Chingo and Aldo Santos: Toni Negri in the face of the US’s warmongering. Is it the ’empire’ or else imperialism? (nr.19, jan. 2003)
“Can we say that S11 has completely confirmed that the ‘Empire’ has already climaxed? Furthermore, is the imperialist reaction unleashed by the American government at odds with the ‘imperial tendency’? A correct answer to these questions is a key issue, since they should enable us to raise a correct policy to fight back Bush’s offensive”.

Juan Chingo/Gustavo Dunga: Empire or imperialism? (nr.17, april 2001)
“Building on a logic of an unreal subject (the multitude) that bears no correspondence at all with an empirically-set subject, they proceed to blur the objective positions of the different exploited classes within the capitalist mode of production, the centrality of the proletariat in particular as the social subject of the socialist revolution.”

Fifth International

Rodney Edvinsson and Kenneth Harvey: Beyond imperialism?: a journey through Empire (nr.2, 2004)
“The twenty-first century has not been kind to this book. It was published in 2000, a little before George W. Bush’s hijacking of the US presidential election allowed the incoming oil and defence industry plutocracy to embark on a domestic and foreign policy agenda which has comprehensively shredded Empire’s central thesis”.

David Camfield: The multitude and the kangaroo: a critique of Hardt and Negri’s theory of immaterial labour (vol.15, nr.2, 2007, s.21-52)
“This article concludes that this dimension of Hardt and Negri’s thought is profoundly fl awed, that immaterial labour cannot play the role they wish to assign it in their theory, and that this failure suggests the importance of a diff erent method of developing theory from that employed by Hardt and Negri, along with so many other contemporary writers.” The article is online as a pdf-file.

Maria Turchetto: The Empire strikes back: on Hardt and Negri (vol.11, nr.1, 2003, s.23-36)
“Empire bears no resemblance to Capital: leaving aside its size,
it is a lightweight cultural production, inside which readers can ‘navigate’ with a certain degree of freedom.” The article is online at Marxsite (pdf).

Giovanni Arrighi: Lineages of Empire (vol.10, nr.3, 2002, s.3-16)
“Most problems arise from Hardt and Negri’s heavy reliance on metaphors and theories and systematic avoidance of empirical evidence. While many readers will undoubtedly be taken in by the erudition deployed throughout the book, more sceptical readers will be put off by statements of fact unbacked by empirical evidence or, worse still, easily falsifiable on the basis of widely available evidence.” The article is online as a pdf file.

Peter Green: The passage from imperialism to empire: a commentary on Empire (vol.10, nr.1, 2002, s.29-77)
“The formation of capitalism, as Marx emphasised, went hand in hand with the creation of a world market. Capital has always resisted confinement within national boundaries, and, in that sense at least, there is nothing new about globalisation. Yet it is a fallacy to leap from that truth to the conclusion that all we are witnessing today is simply an echo of the past, or just another phase in a long history of systematic cycles of internationalisation and national hegemony”.

John Holloway: Going in the wrong direction; or, Mephistopheles; not Saint Francis of Assisi (vol.10, nr.1, 2002, s.79-91)
“Toni Negri’s work is enormously attractive, not only for its own merits, but because it responds to a desperate need. We are all looking for a way forward. The old state-centred model of revolution has failed catastrophically, reformism becomes more and more corrupt and barren, yet revolutionary change is more urgent than ever. Negri refuses to give up thinking and rethinking revolution: that is the great attraction of his work. The problem is that Negri leads us in the wrong direction”.

Leo Panitch and Sam Gindin: Gems and baubles in Empire (vol.10, nr.2, s.17-43)
“Only the most ungenerous of reviewers could fail to admire the ambitious scope of their attempt to integrate history, philosophy, sociology, culture, and economics with a politics from below. And, yet, the end result is a most frustrating book: full of promise but also of inconsistencies, self-contradictions, flights of exaggeration, and gaps in logic.”
Artiklerne er ikke online.

In Defence of Marxism

Pietro Di Nardo: The Empire does not exist: a critique of Toni Negri’s ideas (16. jan. 2003)
“The ideas of Toni Negri, as expressed in his book Empire (co-written with Michael Hardt) have become quite fashionable among those tendencies that wish to deny the essence of Marxism while at the same disguising themselves in the clothing of Marxism. We are publishing a review and critique of the book by Pietro Di Nardo from Naples, Italy. He points out the contradictions in Negri’s thinking and maintains that Marxism is as valid as ever”.

Summary of the Empire debate (3. feb. 2003)
“The book of Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri can, like no other left wing theoretical book before it, and three years after being published, show substantial sales and bestseller placings as well as numerous citations … By now almost every somehow politically orientated magazine has published a discussion, so it seems now is the right time to make an interim audit of the debate. What are, next to applause and enthusiasm, the most important points of critique brought against H&N? Here now follows, service orientated that we are, an overview without commentary of the most central objections to Empire that come from the most diverse of directions”.

International Socialism

Joseph Choonara: Empire built on shifting sand (nr.109, winter 2006, s.143-152)
“The last few years have not been kind to Antonio Negri. Empire, his most famous book, produced in collaboration with Michael Hardt, heralded the death of imperialism … The ink had barely dried before the events of 11 September 2001 and the beginning of a new cycle of imperialist wars. By the time their second major collaboration, Multitude, was published in 2004 the authors were forced to find a place for the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq within their theory.” Artiklen findes også på dansk, se Kontradoxa ovenfor.

Joseph Choonara: Marx or the multitude? (nr.105, winter 2005, s.176-180)
“Hardt and Negri’s new book Multitude continues where Empire left off, tracing the development of the multitude … the concept of multitude is more than a metaphor for the movement. It is a fundamental attack on idea of the working class as an agent for change, and upon the need for political organisations to fight for a strategy to overthrow our rulers.”

August Nimtz: Class struggle under ‘Empire’: in defence of Marx and Engels (nr.96, autumn 2002, s.47-70)
“Marx account of socialist organisation and its role in the class struggle is given a brilliant outline by August Nimtz in a piece that is simultaneously a critique of Toni Negri and Michael Hardt’s Empire. Nimtz draws on his pioneering work in his recent book, Marx and Engels : their contribution to the democratic breakthrough“.

Alex Callinicos: Toni Negri in perspective (nr.92, autumn 2001, s.33-61)
“Alex Callinicos develops a critique of Toni Negri, the theorist of autonomism and the figure to whom many of the Black Bloc anarchists look for inspiration. He argues that Negri’s theory is an impoverished body of ideas as incapable of providing intellectuals guidance to the new movement as the the Black Bloc is of providing practical guidance”.

Jack Fuller: The new workerism: the politics of the Italian autonomists(1980) (nr.92, autumn 2001, s.63-76)
“Jack Fuller’s dissection of the previous phase of autonomist activity was first published in International Socialism in the spring of 1980. We reproduce it here since none of the warnings that it issues about the illusions of autonomism have lost their relevance”.

International Socialist Review

Tom Lewis: Empire strikes out (nr.24, juli-aug. 2002)
“Hardt and Negri stress that Empire is a work of philosophy. As such, the book aims to abstract from the swirl of daily life and singular events a general picture of the social processes that have spawned the contemporary world order: the global market, global circuits of production, and a new structure of political sovereignty. Unfortunately, Empire’s map of global space profoundly distorts the world as it is today”.

International Viewpoint

Charlie Post: Empire and revolution (nr.341, juni 2002)
“Empire is a paradox. An overly long (478 pages with notes and index), often abstruse intellectual exercise, this book would appear to be a work destined to obscrurity – to be read, at best, by small groups of left-wing intellectuals ensconed in academia. Yet Empire has attracted enormeous attention, not only in the academy, but also in the mainstream press and among anti-capitalist and global justice activists in both North America and Europe”. Artiklen er også bragt i det amerikanske tidsskrift Against the Current (nr.99, juli-aug. 2002) under titlen: A critical look at ‘Empire’.

Left Business Observer

Doug Henwood: Blows against the Empire (nr.96, februar 2001)
“We hear a lot about globalization these days, but its meaning is often taken to be self-evident; as is its value (good if you’re orthodox, but if you’re rebel). That’s neither intellectually nor politically satisfying. Now, with Empire, we have an attempt to think freshly about the world we live in, and the possibilities for making it better. There’s a lot wrong with the book, but it’s an excellent starting place”.

Kurt Jacobsen: Empire (vol.1, nr.4, fall 2002)
“Empire is the silliest ‘serious’ book I have ever had the misfortune to read all the way through since the late Allan Bloom’s ultra-dyspeptic right wing bestseller The Closing of The American Mind. I suppose now as then a lot of half-educated, overly earnest readers will dip into the profoundly numbing prose and emerge shivering and feverish, feeling like reborn, fully cultivated and thoroughly hip human beings. All one need do for redemption is wade resolutely through a woefully obscurantist four hundred plus page pseudo-philosophical obstacle course bristling with sub-Althusserian jargon; although poor demented Athusser, unlike Hardt and Negri, occasionally had brilliant things to say”.

London Review of Books

Tom Nairn: Make for the boondocks (vol.27, nr.9, 5. maj 2005)
“While Empire made some readers think of Virgil and Rome, in Multitude the defining shift is more restricted: the postmodern has become the premodern. The philosophy of Spinoza has replaced both Marxism and capitalist neo-liberalism. While affected timelessness is inherent in the Hardt-Negri rhetoric – hence their over-easy references to antiquity or the Middle Ages – the centre of gravity in this book is firmly in the later 17th century.”

Marxists Internet Archive

Michael Hardt and Chris Harman: Harman-Hardt debate: the working class or the multitude?
“This debate was organised by Globalise Resistance on 25 January 2003 at the World Social Forum in Porto Alegre Brazil in front of about 300 people. The two main speakers spoke for 21 minutes each, and there were then some 22 contributions from the floor – one of the highest degrees of participation at any meeting at the forum.”

Millennium : Journal of International Studies

Alex Callinicos: The actuality of imperialism (vol.31, nr.2, 2002, s.319-326)
“Hardt and Negri’s Empire is to be welcomed for, among other things, introducing a distinctive Marxist voice into the debate about globalisation, but it is seriously weakened by its claim that interstate conflict is being supplanted by the impersonal, decentered network of empire … the world of imperialism, as it was portrayed by Lenin and Bukharin during the First World War – an anarchic struggle of unequal rivals – still exists, with the United States as the first among unequals”.

Martin Shaw: Post-imperial and quasi-imperial: state and empire in the global era (vol.31, nr.2, 2002, s.327-336)
“The paper argues that we must take seriously the ‘post-imperial’ character of the contemporary American and Western powers …”

R.B.J. Walker: On the immanence/imminence of Empire (vol.31, nr.2, 2002, s.337-345)
“Hardt and Negri’s Empire is at once a creative and provocative intervention into debates about the character and possibility of contemporary political life as well as a source of considerable irrititation and disappointment”.

Tarak Barkawi/Mark Laffey: Retrieving the imperial: Empire and international relations (vol.31, nr.1, 2002, s.109-127)
“This essays uses Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri’s Empire, one of the most widely read accounts of international politics in the recent years, as a vehicle to rethink international relations’ engagement with the notion of empire”.
Artiklerne er ikke online.

Monthly Review

Samir Amin: Contra Hardt and Negri (vol.66, nr.6, nov. 2014)
“This critique was inspired by Amin’s reading of the massive tome by left theorists Michael hardt and Antonio Negri: Hardt and Negri loftily ignore the concrete analysis of these situations, which have been the subject of many important works. Their naive view of globalization is the one served up by the dominant discourse. The only sources of information and inspiration to which Hardt and Negri refer are drawn from Foreign Policy magazine, through which the Washington establishment sells its goods and which they eagerly consume.”

Samir Amin: Empire and Multitude (vol.57, nr.6, nov. 2005)
“Beyond the two theses of Empire (‘imperialism is outmoded’) and Multitude (‘the individual has become the subject of history’), Hardt and Negri’s discourse exhibits a tone of resignation. There is no alternative to submission to the exigencies of the current phase of capitalist development. One will only be able to combat its damaging consequences by becoming integrated into it. This is the discourse of our moment of defeat, a moment that has not yet been surpassed. This is the discourse of social democracy won over to liberalism, of pro-Europeans won over to Atlanticism.”

Bashir Abu-Manneh: The illusions of Empire (vol.56, nr.2, juni 2004)
“My aim is twofold: first, to examine the validity of the conceptual and theoretical apparatus advanced in Empire; and, second, to contribute to the understanding of the politics and ideology of contemporary global capitalism. As I will argue below, the defining issue of the debate surrounding Empire is whether capitalism has now entered into a ‘post-imperialist’ stage, as Hardt and Negri argue, or whether it has consolidated a new phase of imperialism.”

John Bellamy Foster: Imperialism and “Empire” (vol.53, nr.7, december 2001).
“A growing fashion on the left in the treatment of globalization; one equally attractive to ruling circles judging by the attention given it by the mass media; is exemplified by a new book by Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri, entitled Empire … Its thesis is that the world market under the influence of the information revolution is globalizing beyond the capacity of nation states to affect it … Space does not allow me to deal with all aspects of this argument here. Rather I will comment on just one issue: the supposed disappearance of imperialism”.
Artiklen findes også på norsk, se Røde Fane ovenfor.

Mute Magazine

Steve Wright: Reality check: are we living in an immaterial world? (vol.2, nr.1, nov. 2005)
“Immaterial Labour is seen by (post)Marxists and capitalists alike as the motor of the new economy. Steve Wright recovers Marx’s theory of value from critics such as Antonio Negri to ask whether it is as ‘immeasurably’ productive as is claimed?”

New Left Review

Malcolm Bull: The limits of Multitude (nr.35, sept.-oct. 2005)
“What, if any, agencies of political change exist today – and how should they be conceived? Tracing the long tradition of contrasts between a ‘people’ and a ‘multitude’, Malcolm Bull argues that the differing resolutions of them by Hobbes and Spinoza have descended to the twenty-first century, issuing into a contemporary stand-off between market globalization and populist reactions to it.”

Gopal Balakrishnan: Hardt and Negri’s Empire/Virgilian visions (nr.5, september-oktober 2000, s.142-148)
“Empire bravely upholds the possibility of a utopian manifesto for these times [the expansive republicanism of the US Constitution], in which the desire for another world buried or scattered in social experience could find an authentic language and point of concentration. But to be politically effective, any such reclamation must take stock of the remorseless realities of this one, without recourse to theoretical ecstasy”.

Rethinking Marxism

Dossier on Empire (nr.3-4, fall-winter 2001, s.1-246)
“… the reactions of a large and diverse group of international scholars, who engage and confront the comprehensive historical narrative and specific arguments – cultural, economic, philosophical, and political- encompassed by Empire, together with response by Hardt and Negri”.

Per Olsson: Not the Communist Manifesto (nr.62, feb. 2002)
“This 500-page is neither a Communist Manifesto for the 21st century nor a piece of work which seriosly analyses global capitalism and its contradictions. The authors promise much more than they deliver and, while sometimes claiming to follow the footsteps of Karl Marx, they end up losing touch with reality”.

Socialist Outlook

Karen O’Toole: The picklock that opens all doors (nr.2, winter 2003)
“Of all intellectuals within the anti-capitalist movement, the ideas of Italian autonomist Antonio Negri have the widest influence. But are they the theoretical weapons needed to overthrow capitalism?”

Socialist Review

Alex Callinicos: Commonwealth (March 2010). Review of Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri’s book (Harvard University Press, 2009)
“Commonwealth‘s heart is definitely in the right place. But it hugely underestimates the extent to which the logic of capital still rules the world – and therefore the effort of critical thinking and political organisation that will be required to break its hold.”

Alan Johnson: Negri, democracy and the legacy of Stalinism (vol.3, nr.44, 22. jan. 2004)
“Hardt and Negri’s best-selling book, ‘Empire’ (and Negri’s ‘Insurgencies’) are systematically hostile to democratic politics and to democratic authority, both in the capitalist present and the post-Empire future. They are typical of a far left that, though not Stalinist, still lacks a certain structure of feeling and response concerning liberty and democracy that the Stalinist experience should have given it.”

Martin Thomas: Autonomist Marxism: three themes, three critiques (vol.3, nr.43, 8. jan. 2004)
“A critical survey of ‘autonomist’ Marxism, from its origins in Italian ‘operaismo’ in the 1960s through to the writings today of Antonio Negri and Michael Hardt.”

Spartacist

The senile dementia of Post-Marxism: Empire, Multitude and the ‘Death of Communism’ (nr.59. spring 2006, s.19-33)
“In Empire and Multitude, Hardt and Negri seemed to synthesize the ideas of a layer of ‘post-Marxist’ intellectuals who maintain that the structure and functioning of world capitalism has changed fundamentally over the past few decades … But far from proposing anything new, Hardt and Negri offer up an amalgam of anarchistic lifestyle radicalism and utopian reformism reminiscent of the ‘counterculture’ trend in the 1960s New Left.”

States of emergency: Cultures of Revolt in Italy from 1968 to 1978
By Robert Lumley (Verso, 1990, 396 p.; online at Libcom.org)
“The complete text of the definitive book on the mass social movements in Italy in the 1960s and 70s in which author Robert Lumley traces their development, growth then recuperation and decline.”

Storming Heaven: Class Composition and Struggle in Italian Autonomist Marxism
By Steve Wright (Pluto Press, 2002, 257 p.; online at Libcom.org)
“Storming Heaven is the first comprehensive survey of Italian autonomist theory, from its origins in the anti-stalinist and workerist left of the 1950s to its heyday twenty years later. … Offering a critical and historical exploration of the tendency’s emergence in postwar Italy, it moves beyond the crisis of traditional analytical frameworks on the left, and assesses the strengths and limitations of autonomist marxism as first developed by Antonio Negri, Mario Tronti, Sergio Bologna and others.”

The Struggle Site

Andrew Flood: Is the emperor wearing clothes?: a review of Negri and Hardt’s Empire from an anarchist perspective (marts 2002)
“A criticism that has to be made right from the start is that this is not an easy book to read; in fact large sections of it are almost unintelligible. Empire is written in an elitist academic style that is almost designed to be understood only by the qualified few … For those with limited time just read the preface, intermezzo and the last chapter which will give you about 80% of the ideas in 12% of the pages! In general Empire at first appears to be stuffed full of new ideas but then on reflection you get the ideas that the ‘Emperor has no clothes'”.
For en svensk udgave, se Yelah ovenfor.

The Unrepentant Marxist

Louis Proyect: The Hardt-Negri declaration (May 17, 2012)
“I detect a positive evolution in their thinking – especially a willingness to reconsider the merits of state power, albeit in a highly qualified manner.”

Louis Proyect: Once again on Empire and imperialism (13. juli 2006)
“In the latest issue of the Nation Magazine, Michael Hardt makes a valiant but doomed attempt to rescue his Empire thesis from the dustbin of history.”

Louis Proyect: Hardt-Negri’s ‘Empire’: a marxist critique
“Part of the problem in coming to terms with Empire is the lack of an economic analysis, which is surprising given the self-conscious attempt by the authors to position the book as a Communist Manifesto for the 21st century … Going through the notes of Empire you find abundant references to Baudrillard, Celine, Arendt, Polybius et al, but very few to economic studies. This failure leads the authors to make bald assertions that scream out for verification, but which are not forthcoming.”

The Voice of the Turtle

Symposia: Empire (2002)
“The Turtle is proud to present the third of its annual symposia, on Hardt and Negri’s Empire. As ever, our symposium features a series of riffs, meanderings and critical tangents to the main theme of the book … A more complete introduction to Empire will be posted here soon, but we didn’t want editorial sloth to get in the way of the publication of five fine pieces. For your delight and delectation, then, David Schwam-Baird presents his concerns with Empire‘s fetish of the masses, Dan Moshenberg worries about the silence over gender, Raj Patel wonders why there’s not enough dirty history in Empire, Joe Guinan’s epic essay explores Empire’s advances on Capital, and Martin O’Neill offers an executive summary of sovereignty”.

Weekly Worker

Tobias Abse: Last hurrah of a psychopath (nr.1096, 3. marts 2016). Review of Toni Negri, Storia di un comunista (Milan, 2015, 608 p.)
“Toni Negri’s 608-page autobiography is a predictably strange, and in places virtually unreadable, document … With any luck this rambling and frequently unreadable tome will make no more converts to autonomism.”

What Next!: Marxist Discussion Journal

Tobias Abse: The professor in the Balaclava: Toni Negri and autonomist politics (nr.22, 2002)
“One of the strangest media events of 2001 from a left wing perpective was the cult status accorded to the book Empire, and the consequent return to public prominence of the more well-known of its two authors, Antoni Negri – or Toni Negri as he used to be known to his followers on the Italian far left. The book does contain an astonishing range of references, and it would be easy to be intimidated by Negri’s real or apparrant learning into a respectful silence or a gushing reverence. For those of us only too aware of the kind of confused ideas swirling around in the heads of protestors like Carlo Giuliani and not wishing to see more youngsters dying at the hands of the security forces on Italy’s streets over the next few years, this is not a responsible option”.

Mike Rooke: A new Communist Manifesto? (nr.21, 2001)
“So while Empire is, on the one hand, a visionary celebration of the rebellion of marginalized groups, on the other it remains silent on the question of how the constituent power of the proletariat/multitude (equated with communism) might be brought about … An overly academic and ultimately pretentious intellectual style serves as a cover for the absence of strategic, programmatic thinking, in particular the question of the relationship between revolutionaries and organisations of popular struggle. That the insights, and the breadth of scholarship it displays, are impressive, does not excuse this lack”.

Workers Liberty

Martin Thomas: Two critiques: ‘Empire’ and ‘new imperialism’ (pdf) (nr.2, dec. 2002, s.27-56)
“This article discusses the issues round ‘globalisation’ by way of two critiques, of Negri-Hardt and of the ‘new imperialism’ theory of John Rees, Alex Callinicos and other writers associated with the British SWP.”